Contents

The Movie

Fugitive Alien

Synopsis

In this sci-fi flick edited down from a TV series, our hero is a Starwolf named Ken (Tatsuya Azuma) from the planet Valnastar. After disobeying orders and accidentally killing his best friend - a fellow soldier, Ken becomes a fugitive alien rescued by the Earth starship the Bacchus 3. The crew of the Bacchus 3 includes alcoholic Captain Joe (Jo Shishido), Rocky the pilot (Choei Takahashi), disco-haired navigator Dan (Tsutomu Yukawa), Billy, and Tammy the ‘morale officer’ (Miyuki Tanigawa). Ken joins the Bacchus 3 team at Captain Joe’s invitation. At first, Rocky distrusts Ken, but later they become friends. And Tammy has an unrequited crush on Ken. Meanwhile, Ken’s friends’s sister Rita, who is also Ken’s girlfriend, is ordered by Valnastar ruler Lord Halkon to avenge her brother's death by finding and killing Ken. The Bacchus 3 visits the planet Kararan. Ken leaves the ship, and gets himself thrown in prison. Via two-way radio, Captain Joe orders Ken to find a Colonel from the planet Caesar in the same prison and break him out. After accomplishing this mission, Ken abruptly runs into Rita. But Rita still loves Ken, so she can’t bring herself to kill him. Rita is then killed when she and Ken are attacked by Kararan guards. Ken and the Caesarean Colonel make it back to the Bacchus 3. “To Be Continued” in episode 318, Star Force: Fugitive Alien II.

Other Notes

Crow and Servo's song "He tried to kill me with a forklift!", sung to the theme music of the film, has since become one of MST3K's most memorable lines. Servo sang it again later in Star Force: Fugitive Alien II.

Reference is made in this episode to the movie "Marooned", which actually became one of the experiments for the following season (under its alternate title of Space Travelers).

Outside References

Escape Velocity: In the 1996 space trading and combat video game from Ambrosia Software, there is an easter egg that allows a player to unlock a sound byte of the forklift song, as well as a special weapon that fires a forklift.

Obscure References

"Then Joyce Carol Oates will be out to read from her wondrous new work of fiction, her first novel in well over a month."

Novelist Joyce Carol Oates is known for being very prolific for a "literary" writer, publishing over 40 novels and many other short stories and essays.

"He's in more trouble than Hudson Hawk at the box office!"

​Hudson Hawk was an under-performing action movie from 1991, starring Bruce Willis (who also co-wrote). Due to bad reviews and word of mouth, the movie lost a significant amount of money, helping clinch the TriStar Pictures sale/merge with Columbia.

"It's the twenty-seven 8x10 color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one." - Servo as the capitain has a photographic flashback of his family

This is a line from popular midwestern folk artist Arlo Guthrie's song, "Alice's Restauraunt". The glossy photos in question were supposedly taken of the "scene of the crime" where Arlo and his friends had dumped a half a ton of garbage, and were "to be used as evidence against [them]."

"Everybody run, Tammy's got a gun."

​A reference to a song by comic performer Julie Brown called "The Homecoming Queen's Got A Gun".